A star catalogue is an astronomical catalogue that lists stars. In astronomy, many stars are referred to simply by catalogue numbers. There are a great many different star catalogues which have been produced for different purposes over the years, and this article covers only some of the more frequently quoted ones. Star catalogues were compiled by many different ancient people, including the Babylonians, Greeks, Chinese, Persians, and Arabs. They were sometimes accompanied by a star chart for illustration. Most modern catalogues are available in electronic format and can be freely downloaded from space agencies' data centres. The largest is being compiled from the spacecraft Gaia and thus far has over a billion stars.

Completeness and accuracy are described by the faintest limiting magnitude V (largest number) and the accuracy of the positions.

From their existing records, it is known that the ancient Egyptians recorded the names of only a few identifiable constellations and a list of thirty-six decans that were used as a star clock. The Egyptians called the circumpolar star "the star that cannot perish" and, although they made no known formal star catalogues, they nonetheless created extensive star charts of the night sky which adorn the coffins and ceilings of tomb chambers.

Although the ancient Sumerians were the first to record the names of constellations on clay tablets, the earliest known star catalogues were compiled by the ancient Babylonians of Mesopotamia in the late 2nd millennium BC, during the Kassite Period (c. 1531 – c. 1155 BC). They are better known by their Assyrian-era name 'Three Stars Each'. These star catalogues, written on clay tablets, listed thirty-six stars: twelve for "Anu" along the celestial equator, twelve for "Ea" south of that, and twelve for "Enlil" to the north. The Mul.Apin lists, dated to sometime before the Neo-Babylonian Empire (626–539 BC), are direct textual descendants of the "Three Stars Each" lists and their constellation patterns show similarities to those of later Greek civilization.

In Ancient Greece, the astronomer and mathematician Eudoxus laid down a full set of the classical constellations around 370 BC. His catalogue Phaenomena, rewritten by Aratus of Soli between 275 and 250 BC as a didactic poem, became one of the most consulted astronomical texts in antiquity and beyond. It contained descriptions of the positions of the stars and the shapes of the constellations, and provided information on their relative times of rising and setting.

Approximately in the 3rd century BC, the Greek astronomers Timocharis of Alexandria and Aristillus created another star catalogue. Hipparchus (c. 190 – c. 120 BC) completed his star catalogue in 129 BC, the earliest known attempt to map the entire sky, which he compared to Timocharis' and discovered that the longitude of the stars had changed over time. This led him to determine the first value of the precession of the equinoxes. In the 2nd century, Ptolemy (c. 90 – c. 186 AD) of Roman Egypt published a star catalogue as part of his Almagest, which listed 1,022 stars visible from Alexandria. Ptolemy's catalogue was based almost entirely on an earlier one by Hipparchus. It remained the standard star catalogue in the Western and Arab worlds for over eight centuries. The Islamic astronomer al-Sufi updated it in 964, and the star positions were redetermined by Ulugh Beg in 1437, but it was not fully superseded until the appearance of the thousand-star catalogue of Tycho Brahe in 1598.

The ancient Vedic and other scriptures of India were very well aware of the astronomical positions and constellations. Both Mahabharata and Ramayana provide references to various events in terms of the planetary positions and constellations of that time. The Planetary positions at the time of Mahabharata war has been given comprehensively. A very interesting and exhaustive discussion about the planetary positions along with specific name of constellations appears in a paper by R N Iyengar in the Indian Journal of History of Science.

The earliest known inscriptions for Chinese star names were written on oracle bones and date to the Shang dynasty (c. 1600 – c. 1050 BC). Sources dating from the Zhou dynasty (c. 1050 – 256 BC) which provide star names include the Zuo Zhuan, the Shi Jing, and the "Canon of Yao" (堯典) in the Book of Documents. The Lüshi Chunqiu written by the Qin statesman Lü Buwei (d. 235 BC) provides most of the names for the twenty-eight mansions (i.e. asterisms across the ecliptic belt of the celestial sphere used for constructing the calendar). An earlier lacquerware chest found in the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng (interred in 433 BC) contains a complete list of the names of the twenty-eight mansions. Star catalogues are traditionally attributed to Shi Shen and Gan De, two rather obscure Chinese astronomers who may have been active in the 4th century BC of the Warring States period (403–221 BC). The Shi Shen astronomy (石申天文, Shi Shen tienwen) is attributed to Shi Shen, and the Astronomic star observation (天文星占, Tianwen xingzhan) to Gan De.